Eight found dead in Mexico City

MEXICO CITY — Police found the bullet-ridden bodies of eight people Thursday dumped on streets in a suburb of Mexico City.

The prosecutor’s office in Mexico State, which adjoins Mexico City, said the victims in the first attack were five men and one woman between the ages of 20 and 25 whose bodies were found without clothes in Ecatepec, north of the capital. Officials in Ecatepec said two people died in a second attack in a nearby neighbourhood, but did not specify the sex of the victims.

Authorities said both attacks appeared to be related to organized crime. Mexico City has largely been spared the drug-fueled violence that has resulted in massacres in other parts of the country, and none of the hand-lettered signs that frequently accompany drug-gang slayings were found at the scene.

Mexican court authorities announced that they fired a federal judge accused of improperly dismissing charges or releasing suspects in drug cartel cases. The Federal Judiciary Council said it decided to fire district Judge Efrain Cazares for “serious offences in his judicial duties,” but did not specify what exactly the offences were. The action announced late Wednesday can be appealed to Supreme Court. The judge has no attorney of record. He had been suspended in June from his court duties in the western state of Michoacan.

Federal prosecutors accused Cazares of ignoring credible evidence when he released some Michoacan mayors detained in a mass arrest of officials in 2009. The officials were accused of collaborating with the La Familia drug cartel.

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